Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1426508
96 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2021 foot lengths is new. is is for catheter applica- tions in the medical space, so we trademarked Maxi-Flex and CatheterFlex. e Medtronics and Boston Scientifics of the world that are doing heart-mapping, heart ablation for AFib, for example, will now be able to do it less invasively by going through the femoral artery up into the heart. To map or to ablate, you need electronics; using traditional wires was okay, but they're running out of space. You can't make this as large as possible. e flexible circuit allows us to get 64 or 128 channels down the length of this catheter in a much smaller, much more flexible format than traditional wires. It's really enabling the capability of mapping and providing more resolution for mapping of the heart. We're seeing a pretty significant interest amongst the big players in this type of technology. Johnson: Has there been other creative devel- opment ongoing in your R&D team? Taylor: Yes, we're also looking at flexible heat- ers. Traditional flex circuits are made with copper—low resistance, right? We're trans- ferring signals, or maybe some high current- carrying features. ere's also the ability to use a resistive foil and create a heating ele- ment. e thin film of the traditional poly- imides allows for extremely fast heat transfer; with COVID, and in some of the testing that's been done, there's a huge demand for heating elements in biomedical, bacterial, or viral testing. e flu, colds, and coronaviruses can all be tested in a lab and that lab has to heat up the tissue sample or the DNA sample to a specific temperature and then get a positive or a negative. e flexible heater technology is not some- thing new. ere just haven't been many players in that market. It has been beneficial to be able to do some fine line features, some long features, as well as etch resist to foils. We really looked at that market and think we can expand upon it. We can bring some of the rigid-flex capabilities that PCI has, couple that together, and broaden our market for flexible heating. Johnson: I'm sensing that with this merger, you're finding some creative ways to diversify. Taylor: Absolutely. PCI has been a high-tech company. ey've focused on military appli- cations, complexity, multiple layer counts. So, they've developed a lot of good technolo- gies for microvias, blind vias, and fill vias, and we've brought our flex knowledge with medical applications, specifically. We're able to bring a lot of medical customers into that rigid-flex territory. And then they're able to bring a lot of the military and aerospace customers into the flex, and we also do full assembly in-house. at's something that All Flex brings to the table, being able to popu- late these boards, and with rigid-flex; it's like a motherboard combined with an intercon- nect, right? ere are always components being populated and PCI didn't have that capability. Now we can do more value-add as a combined company and maybe in the future, box-build is something we could con- tinue to look at. Johnson: Jamin, thank you for the update. Taylor: I appreciate it. ank you very much. FLEX007 We're seeing a pretty significant interest amongst the big players in this type of technology.